The principle is quite similar to Microsoft Access or Lotus Domino: applications are created directly from the user interface, and there is no need to write or deploy source code on the server file system.

Why using Plomino to build the Pool Corpus database?

Lack of technical resources

The Pool Corpus team had no internal technical resources able to develop and set up an on-line database using standard technologies. And they could not afford investing too many time to learn to do it by themselves.

As Plomino offers a large set of ready-to-use features, they have been able to build their own on-line database without any web programming knowledge.

Migrating the existing data

The existing data was stored in Excel sheets or Microsoft Access databases.

Plomino is able to import data as CSV, and imported data can be post-processed in order to clean up and normalize the information.

Interoperability

Plomino exposes a full JSON API which allows to make the Pool Corpus requestable from any external system.

Specific web API can implemented if needed.

Security

Some of the personal information stored in the Pool Corpus database cannot be published on-line.

Plomino provides a simple but robust access control mechanism which allows to easily exclude some information from external access.

More information

Underlying platform

Plomino runs on Plone, which is a solid open source content management system (CMS).

Plone offers a large scope of features to build any type of website, it is mainly used in professional contexts, and it is known as one of the most secured CMS.

Note: just as Plone, Plomino is an open source software, published under the GPL license. It can be freely used by anybody.

Who can use Plomino?

Anybody can.

A lot of Plomino users have absolutely no programming knowledge. Most of the Plomino features provides a default behavior which allows to get things working.

Nevertheless, for more skilled users, Plomino can also be entirely scripted, to obtain any custom behavior.

Easy deployment

Plomino allows to import or export applications between two servers directly through the web.

It is a way to deploy application from a local machine (or a development server) to a production server, or reversely, to retrieve an on-line application in order to fix it or change it locally without impacting the on-line version.

Plomino offers the same mechanism to exchange data (to replicate data between two servers or between a server and a local machine).